


Kingdom of daylight's dauphin

by lotesse



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Arthurian, Canon Era, Friendship, Hero Worship, Loneliness, M/M, Missing Scene, Pre-Slash, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:29:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21942178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotesse/pseuds/lotesse
Summary: Bran glowed like a torch in the flat clouded light of the Welsh mountain day, come into himself, no longer the isolated boy who'd been hurt by his schoolmates' taunts about fairy blood. Like Will, now, he too had a destiny in the pattern of the High Magic.A series of interstitial WillxBran scenes from canon.
Relationships: Bran Davies/Will Stanton
Comments: 15
Kudos: 72
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Kingdom of daylight's dauphin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blue_spruce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_spruce/gifts).



1.

Will's ears were ringing, and the ground spun beneath his feet. His mind whirled with half-formed intentions. Should he say something? Do something? He was the Old One present at the scene; it was his responsibility to see to containment. 

Men were moving around him, speaking in high harsh strained voices; the power of the Grey King was broken, but the hillside above the Pleasant Lake was still awash in horror. 

At the corner of Will's vision, Bran Davies' hair shone so brightly that he feared he might be blinded if he turned to look at the other boy full-on. 

He was very tired, in the relief that came after open conflict with the Dark, and his arm ached abominably.

How much had Jones Ty-Bont heard? How much had he believed? Bran's secret, in addition to his own, would need to be protected. 

John Rowlands had hold of Caradog Prichard. The red-haired man was muttering incoherently, his mind collapsed in on itself as a result of the unbearable knowledge and power that had been channelled through it. 

Will thought of the man Hawkin, the Walker, huddled in the Huntercombe hedgerows in the gathering winter, and shuddered. 

“All right, John?” Idris Jones Ty-Bont said, as John hauled Prichard off to the Land-rover. 

“I'll lock him in there,” John said to Jones Ty-Bont, “but I don't know that it's necessary; the man's clearly had his break. No more danger to beast or man. Or woman,” he added thoughtfully, glancing over to where Owen Davies was standing, his arm around his foster-son's shoulders; he and Bran had come down the slope to the lakeside together, not breaking physical contact for more than a moment. 

The farmer said, “You'll still press the assault charge, Owen, I hope?”

“We'll see,” Owen Davies said. The quiet, serious, solitary man had kept Bran's – Guenever's – secret for a dozen years, now, Will realized, wondering anew at his care and discretion.

“And how's the arm, Will?” John rumbled close by his ear. “All this excitement can't have been easy on it. You come to Wales for a rest cure and we send you back in bits, how do you like that?” 

Will started at John's unexpected nearness; he had been losing himself in reflection, and had forgotten to mask his abstraction. Oh, Merriman, Will thought despairingly, I'm making a mess of this, I know I am.

It was only that Bran glowed like a torch in the flat clouded light of the Welsh mountain day, and now he knew why: he was the Pendragon, only true-born son of Arthur, heir to a great king and champion of the Light.

Dazedly, he realized that none of the men had said anything about the events they had witnessed. How much had they seen? Maybe it would be all right without his having to tell anyone any lies or place any enchantments at all –

“What? What's wrong with Will's arm?” Bran said, his voice cutting sharp and clear through the air. He ducked out from his foster-father's grasp, coming closer down the gentling slope.

“It's all right. Just sore. I fell, earlier, on the mountain,” he told Bran, deliberately letting his tone convey the full truth; Bran knew where the forces of their enemy had been gathered, and would understand the nature and the context of the strike.

Bran was the son of the greatest war leader the British Isles had ever known, after all. And now he knew it. 

Bran Pendragon was come into himself, now, no longer the isolated boy who'd been hurt by his schoolmates' taunts about fairy blood. Like Will, now, he too had a destiny in the pattern of the High Magic.

“And you've cycled and climbed around and does what-knows else without attending to it, hey?” Bran said, the criticism in his voice leavened with light affection.

Will could see the new knowledge radiating out from his friend's face like an unearthly corona, a fierce, cold, pale, hawk-like glitter of leashed arrogance, predatory power, and certain potency. Once, he'd worried about Bran's aloof ways; but that was before he'd seen Bran like this, knowing and known both, and centered calmly in his knowledge.

It must have been his disorientation, his loss of his memory and his own destiny, that had hidden the truth of Bran's origins from him when they'd first met, Bran insistently asking _Are you hurt?_ as he came down the mountain slope in Cavall's wake. Looking at Bran, he thought, Even if I had not learned his history, seeing him like this I would have recognized him easily for Arthur's heir.

“It wasn't the most important thing,” he said.

He had thought that it had been remarkable to be known by Bran before, to sweep back the curtain on the mysteries of his life for the strange Welsh boy, and be seen by him as he was: half a boy, half an Old One, moving through levels of time like some awkward amphibian.

Now, when Bran looked at him with eyes that had seen the High Magic, in the knowledge of his own power and lineage, it was like a hammer-blow, and it drove the breath out of him.

“Still you do look faint,” Bran said, peering at him more closely.

Well, Will thought, it was not the most dignified strategy, but it would serve – fussing over him, telling the story of his earlier injury, would do nicely to occupy the minds of the men who had seen too much. If they were bothering about Will, they would not think to remember the sight of Bran Davies, standing on a crag and commanding the forces of the Light against the powers of the Grey King.

He wondered if they would feel the difference, the people of the valley at the foot of the mountain. Now that the brooding malice of the Lord of the Dark had left it, would they still speak of the cloud patterns cast off from the peak with dread? Would the mountain, perhaps, become a beautiful place, widely celebrated? Or would the ingrown superstitions prove stronger than magic, remaining to create fear and suspicion even after the victory had been won?

Bran stood close beside him, reaching out to support him under his un-injured elbow; and Will surrendered to the inevitable, letting himself be supported.

2.

The second time Will made the journey to Wales, he was both stronger and weaker than he'd been on his first sojourn there. He was no longer infirm at all in body, and his breath was finally back where it belonged, comfortably filling up his lungs; but the cracks in the foundations of his life were beginning to split into gaping faults. 

He'd told his brother Stephen the secret he'd never shared with anyone except Bran, and – the way that Stephen had looked at him – 

Everything was running toward some great and terrible end, he could feel it pulling at him, beating through his blood. 

He felt old, and worn out, and afraid.

His Aunt Jen was going to be there to meet him at the station. He missed Bran, wanted the comfort and security of Bran's easy acceptance of his difference, Bran's unshakeable awareness of his underlying humanity. 

Ah, but there it was, the problem question – did Will Stanton's humanity underlie his status as an Old One? Or had it never been anything more than an illusion, a protective covering for a weak changeling until it could grow stronger?

Under Stephen's scrutiny, he'd certainly not felt human. 

The valley passing by the train windows was green and brown with summer, Wales seeming to reach out to welcome him. His mind returned to the horn in his bag on this shoulder, the quest that had brought him back. It was not for himself, or his aching heart, that he had come. There were greater matters afoot. Sternly, he lectured himself that he was not to let his own selfish emotions get in the way of what he was there to do – what they would all be there to do.

When the train pulled into Tywyn station, he gathered his things, dutifully checking twice before disembarking. He saw his Aunt Jen on the platform right away, reliable and safe and familiar; and then, as he started walking toward her, he glimpsed a flash of pale hair beside her, moving the other way through the crowd.

“I got the ticket for the parking validation, Mrs. Evans,” Bran said, just as Will hove to with his bags slung akimbo, the three of them suddenly sharing an open space in the busy summertime station crowd.

“Bran,” Will said stupidly, startled, blinking. “Hi, Aunt Jen,” he managed. “Bran, I thought you'd be busy – how did you know I was – ”

The other boy smiled at him, golden eyes warm and perceptive. “How did I know you were coming in today, when you barely let me know you were coming at all? I pay attention, English, and I know when to ask questions.”

“And who to ask!” Jen Evans put in, laughing. “He's been bothering me about your visit for weeks now, Will. Although,” she added slyly cutting her eyes to the side, “I'm sure he didn't want to let on. Oh dear, Bran, was I not supposed to say?”

Bran only laughed in response to her teasing, and Will looked around him and saw that the sun was out, and the sky blue, and the bags on his back suddenly did not weigh so heavily on his heart.

3.

Beside the freshwater river in the Lost Land, Will watched as Bran stretched out on the bank, his body language expansive and relaxed as it had not been since they'd left his home territory for the baffling world of the Country, the City, and the Castle.

It hadn't been an easy journey; Will wasn't surprised that Bran had been so tensed and ready through their travails. But one thing still stuck puzzling in his mind, and now, with Bran looking better, he thought it might be all right to ask it.

“Why did the mirrors upset you so much? I didn't like them, exactly, but they bothered you a lot, I could tell.” He put the question with his eyes cast down, turned away at an angle so that he could still see Bran, but the other boy had some privacy to work through its impact.

Bran swallowed and sat up.

“We don't have to talk about it, if you'd rather not,” Will added hastily, mourning Bran's lost tranquility as soon as he'd managed to fatally disrupt it.

“No, that's all right,” Bran said, voice rough and thoughtful. “I guess it makes sense that you'd ask me that – you, Old One, who's always hiding in plain sight.”

“Do I?”

“Of course! Don't play the innocent, I know you do it on purpose often enough. Sometimes, though, it happens to you without your meaning it. You've gotten so good at concealment that you're not so afraid of being seen.”

“Ah,” Will said, the twinge of pain in his heart with “Stephen's memories” written on it making itself known once more. “Being seen can be very terrible, I do understand that.”

“Yes,” Bran said impatiently, batting away Will's sympathy, “But it's not really the same for you, is it? You can chose concealment, to be forgettable. Me, I've never been able to do that. One look at me, and – you remember.'

“He challenges me, in reflections,” Bran went on, a little dreamily, looking off into the haze of light at the horizon by the river's mouth. “My own face. He wears a challenging look; like he wants me to justify my life. What have I done? What am I good for? As if it has never been enough for me to just _be_ , like other children. I used to wonder if that was why people always took against me, if there was just something about my weird freak face that made people feel bad inside whenever they saw it.”

“I'm sorry,” Will said. “I shouldn't have ever brought it up. I don't feel that way when I see you, though.”

Bran sent him a flashing grin, then, bright and vivid in the dappled brilliance of the day. “Don't be,” he said. “It's different, with you. Because I know you don't.”

Flopping back down on the bank, he rolled over onto his belly and pulled up on his elbows to meet Will's eyes. “Is it because you're so experienced with monsters, Old One? You've looked on the horrors of the vasty deeps, and no odd-looking kids are going to get you worked up?”

“No,” Will said with a laugh, “Although that Afanc was an ugly mug. No, I find that often the most frightening things are the most beautiful. You're not altogether wrong, Bran, in what you were thinking before. Not that you're at fault, or not – not lovable, but – you are challenging, Bran, not your face, but your heart. You challenge people to see their true selves, to put down their comforting illusions and lies. The thing is – it's all right with me, that you see me. You're a good person, and I trust you – because you're not just like everyone else.”

“Well,” Bran said, absorbing the kind words with adolescent awkwardness but clear gratitude, “I guess it's a good thing you don't want to hang about with everyone else. I'm good for a quest, at least.”

“Good for a lot more than that,” Will said, catching and holding his friend's strange, beautiful, perceptive eyes. “A lot more than that.”

But he didn't tell Bran, that suspended day just before midsummer, just how beautiful he really was in Will's sight.


End file.
